[ml/nj]

Now reading Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, The Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 at the suggestion of FReeper author Matt Bracken. It isn't pretty.

ML/NJ

[leaning conservative]

Bkmk

[Excellence]

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain is another must-read book.

[No.6]

One word: Lepanto.

[SandRat]

After reading this history, do you still think Islam is a teaceful religion?

[DungeonMaster]

Islam thinks the seat of Rome is the heart of Western Christendom?

[Alas Babylon!]

Although centuries of crusades largely safeguarded Italy and Sicily from further Islamic attacks, by 1480, Ottoman Sultan Muhammad II invaded Italy and captured Otranto. More than half of its twenty-two thousand inhabitants were massacred, five thousand led away in chains. On a hilltop (subsequently named “Martyr’s Hill”) another eight hundred Christians were ritually beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam, their archbishop sawed in half.

I have been to Otranto. The Otranto Cathedral's altar is made up of the skulls and bones of the slaughtered. It is a somber and heroic place at the same time.

Those bones are of the 800 Otranto Martyrs who refused to abandon the Lord Jesus in order to save their lives by converting to Islam.